Meal. Day 44 of Lent. Christ our Passover Lamb.

Meal. Day 44 of Lent. Christ our Passover Lamb.

The symbolism of the Passover

Passover is the retelling of the great story of how God redeemed the Jewish nation from enslavement in Egypt. The celebration centers around the Passover lamb which was sacrificed and its blood put over the doorposts as a sign of faith after the Lord told then He would Pass Over the home during the last plague killing every firstborn in Egypt.

The Passover lamb was to be a “male without defect.” When the lamb was roasted and eaten, none of its bones were to be broken.    It was customary during crucifixion to break the leg bones of the person after a few hours in order to hasten their death. The only way a person could breathe when hanging on a cross was to push up with his legs, which was very exhausting. By breaking the legs, death followed soon by asphyxiation. The soldiers broke the legs of the other two men, but did not break Jesus’ legs since He was already dead.

The New Testament reveals Christ is our Passover Lamb whose blood was shed for us and whose body was broken for us.

During Passover week, Jesus came into the city of Jerusalem five days before the lamb was killed in the temple as the Passover sacrifice for the sins of the people of Israel. Five days before the lamb was to be sacrificed, it was chosen. Jesus entered Jerusalem on lamb selection day as the lamb of God.

The day Jesus was crucified was the day of the Passover celebration and the day that the Passover lamb was to be sacrificed. For the previous 1,200 years, the priest would blow the shophar or ram’s horn at 3:00 p.m. – the moment the lamb was sacrificed, and all the people would pause to contemplate the sacrifice for sins on behalf of the people of Israel. At 3:00, when Jesus was being crucified, He said, “It is finished” and gave up His spirit to His Father.

As the Passover lamb was sacrificed and the shophar was blown from the Temple and the sacrificial Lamb of God died, the veil of the Temple-a three-inch thick, several story high cloth that marked the Holy of Holies- tore from top to bottom. Christ sacrificial death represented a removal of the separation between God and man.

The festival of unleavened bread began Friday evening at sunset. The Jews would take some of the grain – the “first fruits” of their harvest – to the Temple to offer as a sacrifice. In so doing, they were offering God all they had and trusting Him to provide the rest of the harvest. It was at this point that Jesus was buried – planted in the ground. Paul refers to Jesus as the first fruits of those raised from the dead in 1 Corinthians.

As such, Jesus represents the fulfillment of God’s promise to provide the rest of the harvest – resurrection of those who follow the Messiah. In the Seder, the Passover dinner, three matzahs are put together representing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The middle matzah is broken, wrapped in a white cloth, and hidden, representing the death and burial of Jesus. The matzah represents Jesus, who was striped and pierced, which was prophesized by Isaiah,  David, and Zechariah. Following the Seder meal, the “buried” matzah is “resurrected,” which was foretold in the prophecies of David.

It was during the Last Supper, a Passover seder meal, that Jesus proclaimed that the meal represented Himself and that He was instituting the New Covenant, which was foretold by Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. The celebration of this covenant has become the ordinance of communion in the Christian Church. At the end of the meal, Jesus took the unleavened bread, broke it, and said that it represented His body. Then He took the cup of wine, which would have been the third cup of the Seder meal – the cup of redemption. Jesus said that it was the new covenant in His blood “poured out for you.” It is through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we are declared clean before God, allowing those of us who choose to accept the pardon by faith of his redemptive work through his cross, burial and resurrection, to commune with Him – both now and forevermore through the eternal life He offers.

Fifty days later, on the anniversary of the giving of the law Pentecost, God left the earthly temple to inhabit those who call on the name of Jesus through His Holy Spirit and issued the Great Commission that we might spread the good news of the gospel to the world.

To learn more about Christ our Passover lamb visit this site.